Thought-Wave Arrest

    While making a routine inspection of a Sunset Blvd. tavern, Jack Zumstein and Adolphus Miles, supervising public health sanitarians (yes, that's the correct title), were heckled by a customer who clearly had overindulged.

    When they went behind the bar to inspect the sanitation he followed.  When they told him to get out he refused.  The owner tried to quiet him but the borracho only became more belligerent.

    The inspectors said  jokingly that if they had a dime they'd call police. The drunk loftily said he'd pay for the call.  By this time they'd finished their inspection and were heading out the door.  The heckler followed, noisily insisting they call police.

    You know that old saying, "There's never a policeman around when you need one"?  At this moment a police car stopped at the curb to check a traffic matter.

    As the officers gathered him in, the awe and bewilderment on the drunk's face was a sight to behold.  Jack and Adolphus can see him now, telling the fellows in the drunk tank how he was captured by the use of thought waves.

    AS PEOPLE WHO still take trains know, the diesels arriving at Union Station sometimes go past the terminal, then back into the platforms for passengers to disembark.  A man named Frank and his daughter Pamela, returning Sunday from visiting San Diego Zoo on the Santa Fe San Diegan , heard a woman remark as the train neared the station, "Look, we're backing into Los Angeles!"  Her companion said, "That's been going on since Los Angeles was founded."

    GIFT BUYING
Be it fur coat or book.
One thing makes me weep:
Inexpensive ones look
So awfully cheap.
        –JULIAN BROWN

    ATTENTION, hunch players, [illegible] L.A. girl, received a stuffed army mule a few days ago as a gift from her boyfriend, who attends West Point.  "That doesn't look like a mule," her father jested,  "it looks more like a cranky lion."  "It does not." she retorted, "It looks like a happy tiger!"

    On Monday, the father happened to notice that Happy Tiger was entered in the third race at Pimlico.  On a hunch he bet $2 across the board.  Yes, with a bookie.  Happy Tiger won and paid $152, $37 and $16.40 — total $205.40.

    THIS IS TO report that Bonnie Black, 6, on being confronted with an eye-winking, arm-waving electrified dummy Santa Claus in a big drugstore, remarked, "Well, that's better than that 'Ho ho,hee hee!' bit."

    A MOTORIST on Beverly Blvd. swerved sharply for no apparent reason in front of car in the next lane and the near-victim sounded his horn in protest.  The guilty motorist yelled, "Aw, take it easy, you'll live longer!"  "You drive better," was the retort, "and I will!" The guilty motorist smiled and said, "You know something — you're right!"

    ONLY IN L.A. — Kay Cataldi saw a woman carrying a live white hen go into a restaurant at 1st and Spring Sts.  What some people won't do to get their food cooked the way they want it. 

    AT RANDOM — A dejected fellow leaving the Rams-Colts game Saturday was overheard by Frank Barron muttering, "My luck's so bad I couldn't pick last week's winners!" . . . Recommended reading for those who have strong views on the death penalty — David Dressler's Coronet article, "Capital Punishment Is Murder" . . . The clientele is at it again.  C.E. Brown of Costa Mesa says he thought the forecast, "Widespread eye irritation is expected tomorrow," meant the smog would be especially irritating to people with widespread eyes.  And when the forecast is "light eye irritation" Rich Fowler is sure glad he doesn't have light eyes. . . Needling taxpayers are referring to their exorbitant taxes as payola to tax collector H.L. Byram, who is really the innocent victim.

Censorship Reverberations

    The action of Principal Walter Larsh of Venice High School in banning "The New Pocket Anthology of American Verse" from an 11th grade English classroom is reverberating among teachers.

    The book, available at drugstores and newsstands for 50 cents, was withdrawn on the complaint of Mrs. Theodore Herin, who was backed, she said, by two Venice ministers and the head of a civic organization.  She contended three poems by Walt Whitman and one by Ezra Pound in it were unfit for 11th graders.

    Connoisseurs in the realm of censorship might be interested in the fact that there are more than 500 poems in the collection, arranged in alphabetical order according to author, and unless a person knew what he was looking for he would do considerable reading, very good reading, too, before getting to Ezra and Walt.  Incidentally, the four poems Mrs.Herin considered obscene were not among the 50 assigned by the teacher, Mrs. Florence Russell.

    A UCLA PROF says, "I'm stunned and delighted by the thought that a student could be suspected of reading beyond an assignment.  But now a teacher doing a decent job of teaching American literature is under fire and a first class anthology has lost the approval of a high school principal."

    A group of junior high-school teachers are less tolerant.  They write, "We could have sympathy and perhaps a good laugh over such an anachronism if the principal's action and the people who brought it about had not been successful in achieving their petty, malicious and undemocratic intent.  It becomes more difficult to teach the concept of majority rule when a vocal minority can so easily triumph.  Let them be heard, we say, but why should they be victorious by default."

    Meanwhile, back at my desk, I find a copy of the magazine Adam, subtitled, "The man's home companion."  It strikes a single note — provocatively posed female nudity.  In its way it's on a par with some of the lurid pocketbooks available to 11th graders at any drugstore, along with the condemned anthology of verse.  Let us remind all those concerned that, for better or worse, this is 1959.

    TELEPHONE people are laughing among themselves at a classic case of chaos which occurred in San Diego.  A customer called the company and ordered a telephone jack installed in his patio.  The order was placed in the wrong file or something with the result that on page 422 of the phone book there is a listing, "Patio, Jack."

    A LADY NAMED Kathleen noticed one of her car's tail lights was out and went into a service station for a replacement.  A mechanic found the bulb was all right but the wiring was faulty.  He fixed it and made out a bill for $2.10.  Kathy, embarrassed, discovered she didn't have that much so the bill was reduced to $1.80.  But in counting her change she found she had only $1.35.  The man wouldn't go for that, so Kathy, a little desperately, asked if he would accept one of the credit cards she carried.  Sure.  But the price went back to $2.10.

    INCITED BY the grim fact that the gal standing under the mistletoe is seldom the one a man wishes was,  Norte Joven says he's working on an electronics device which will cause a sprig of Phoradendron flavescens to blast off from a tiny launching pad concealed under his lapel and go into orbit above and around the head of the desired target.  Naturally he refers to it as his guided mistletoe.

    BIRTHDAY PARTY
The sticky little kiddies,
Are homeward bound
    again:
My darling's one year older,
And I've aged another ten.
        ROBERTA MORGAN

    AROUND TOWN — When students appeared at Audubon Junior High Saturday to rehearse for the upcoming production of "Wizard of Oz" they discovered someone had planted a  nearby real estate man's For Sale sign on the lawn in front of the auditorium . . . Believe it or not it's pure coincidence that the L.A. Press Club is taking over the Theater Mart, 600 N. Vermont Ave., where "The Drunkard" ran for many years, as its quarters . . . A  blond young lady at 3rd and Broadway was carrying a miniature poodle partially dyed pink.